The new organic fleece range from Birch Fabrics is crazy soft and comes in all those beautiful tones I’ve come to expect from Birch.
When I first decided to sew up these fleece welly liners, I had a completely different finished look in mind. Then a friend shared a photo of his crocheted fox slippers and I thought that’s it, these welly liners need ears! Luckily I had the organic cotton fleece in Coral which actually comes out a rather foxy shade, and I just knew that the dark shroom would lend itself to being a bear!
What will look cuter than a fox and a bear peeking out of your little one’s wellies as they trundle through the woods! I’m kinda tempted to make a larger pair for myself!!
Supplies
- 1/4 yard organic cotton fleece in coral
- 1/4 yard organic cotton fleece in dark shroom
- scraps of kunin eco-fi felt in black and white
- coordinating organic cotton sewing thread
- Fox & Bear fleece welly liners pattern (Approximate Children’s sizes UK7/Euro 24/US8 & UK11/Euro 29/US12- the sizing is very general and it will probably work for a size larger and a size smaller! You may find that your kid needs to have a size larger wellie, when using liners, which helps extend the wearing time of the boots!)
Most of the seams for the fleece welly liners are flatlocked. This means, that there is no seam allowance and that the seams are flat against the skin… pretty important for stopping little feet from getting blisters on adventures in the woods and extended puddle jumping sessions!!
There are a couple of ways to create a flatlocked seam…
- Invest in a flatlocker!
- Use a blind hem foot and a 1-needle overlock stitch on an overlocker
- Use an elastic stitch on your regular sewing machine!!
I’m going to show you how to create the flatlock stitch using methods 1 & 2. The finished stitches are slightly different, but they both do the job! I actually used my regular sewing machine to sew these fleece welly liners together. mostly because I don’t have the right shade thread to use with this project!!
Overlocker method (I’m using my brother 1034d here, which is an entry level overlocker)
- replace your regular presser foot with a blind stitch presser foot
- remove the right needle
- line up the two pieces of fabric wrong sides facing, and stitch together, allowing the stitches to overlap the edge a little. You will need to play around with the tension settings for the needle, upper looper and lower looper. I ended up with settings of 2,5 and 9.
- gently pull fabric flat
right side of fabric
underneath of fabric
Sewing machine method
- select the elastic stitch
that’s stitch number 6, here on my brother XL-3600…
…and stitch number 10 here on my new Pfaff ambition 1.5… so you can see that both entry level and slightly fancier models have an elastic stitch!
- place fabrics right side up with raw edges abutting and centre them with the needle central position.
- sew together
How easy was that!! If you prefer you can use some iron on stabiliser to keep the two pieces of fabric in position.
So now you know how to flatlock… let’s get started!
Step 1: Cut out all your pattern pieces from the fleece and felt. If you can reduce the presser foot pressure on your machine, or you have a walking foot attachment, you may want to use those. Otherwise, make sure not to pull on the fabric or it will stretch out, whilst you sew!
Step 2: sew the back of sock together. (if using a sewing machine, the easiest way to do this is to sew inside the tube.)
Step 3: sew the heel to the back of the sock.
Step 4: sew the upper to the sock and the heel.
Step 5: Sew the liner to the sole. if using a sewing machine, you probably want to use the free arm for this stage!
Step 6: Sew felt inner ears to the fleece ear pieces.
Step 7: Sew fleece ear pieces right sides together leaving the bottom open. turn ear right side out. baste along open edge.
Step 8: Insert ears into slits in cuff and sew shut.
Step 9: Sew, felt, nose and eye pieces in place.
Step 10: Use flatlock stitch to sew the short edges of cuff together.
Step 11: Fold cuff in half and using flatlock stitch sew together the two raw edges of the cuff to the top of the liner. make sure that the fox/bear face is on the fleece side of the liner and that you match the seams at the back.
Variations
- Try making different kinds of animals, the cream fleece would make a great polar bear!!
- Add an outer layer and a row of hot glue dots to the outer sole (thanks Jill, from Made with Moxie, for the glue dot tip) to make animal slipper boots!!
